1907 $20 Double Eagle at $160,000 ahead of August 3 coin auction

A 1907 ultra high relief $20 Double Eagle features a rare sans serif font on the edge

A 1907 ultra high relief $20 Double Eagle with a rare font is coming to auction next month.

The 1907 $20 gold coins were the first designed by Irish-born sculptor August Saint-Gaudens.

One of just two 1907 $20 ultra high reliefs to feature sans serif writing on the edge

Yet the attempts to produce an ultra high relief coin in the Greek fashion were met with difficulty, as Saint-Gaudens had wryly predicted.

"I think it would be best to know at once if there are not some inflexible modern requirements that necessitate extreme flatness," he had said in a letter to the US treasury secretary Leslie Mortier Shaw a year earlier.

The problems in producing the ultra high relief coins resulted in just 22-24 examples being struck.

The lot is one of just two of those examples that contain the sans serif font on the edge of the coin - an early feature that would not be continued in later strikes.

The PR58 rated coin is currently selling for $160,000 in online bidding ahead of its August 3 sale at Heritage Auctions' US Signature Coins auction, taking place between August 2-5 in Philadelphia.

It will be fascinating to see how it compares with another 1907 ultra high relief $20 Double Eagle, which sold for $2.8m last month.

A high relief version of the 1907 coin is currently second in the bidding. The MS65 rated coin is selling for $22,000. It will also go under the hammer on August 3.